


If You Wanna Go

by captainamergirl



Category: One Tree Hill
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 09:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8244688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainamergirl/pseuds/captainamergirl
Summary: Quinn is not Sara...





	

**If You Wanna Go**  
  
 _"You keep pushing me away, Clay, and I want to know why."  
  
"Because you're not Sara."_  
  
She woke up from her coma first and then worried for the longest time that he wasn't going do the same. They had been shot and nearly killed by a woman who looked just like his deceased wife. When he opened his beautiful blue eyes for the first time, she was sitting there right next to him, holding his hand. He offered her a weak smile and then slowly extracted his hand from hers.   
  
She could tell even then that things were already changing between them.   
  
_"I know I'm not Sara. I never tried to be. I was hoping you had accepted that we were two very different people ..."_  
  
"I have. You are so both different in every way. The way I feel about you two ... it's so different, come to find out."  
  
"Oh ..."  
  
He healed quickly once he was given a kidney transplant. He was home in no time really and immediately he started pushing her away. He drank a lot too though he knew it was no good for his new kidney. They fought about it. He pushed her further and further away until she felt like she was hanging onto them - or what had been them - by the skin of her fingertips. He eventually stopped coming home at nights. She called everyone asking if they had seen him but no one said they had - or they claimed not to. She worried about him, where he went, where he slipped away to. He said it was none of her business. She knew she couldn't hold onto him forever if he wasn't as committed to their relationship as she was. She was prepared to walk away though it made her ache in every region of her heart just at the thought. But first she had to know why he was pushing her away, why things had changed so much from the moment he had woken up from his coma.  
  
So she asked him. Cornered him on the way out the door to parts unknown one night - yet again.  
  
XoXoXo  
  
"You keep pushing me away, Clay, and I want to know why."  
  
She expected him to deny it again or just walk out like he always did now. But he surprised her by answering.  
  
"Because you're not Sara."  
  
She swallowed hard over the big lump in her throat. "I know I'm not Sara. I never tried to be. I was hoping you had accepted that we were two very different people ..."  
  
He nodded and looked at her, his gaze unwavering. "I have. You are so both different in every way. The way I feel about you two ... it's so different, come to find out."  
  
"Oh ..."  
  
He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "'Oh'?" He echoed. He sighed again. "It's not what you're thinking."   
  
Quinn crossed her arms over her chest, trying to put an arms-length between herself and her emotions the way she always did when things got too hard to handle. When the emotions she felt threatened to eat her alive, or at least rip away her hard-won sanity.  
  
"Clay, if you want to go, you can. I won't try to stop you... Well, um, this is your beach house come to think of it, so I will go..." She started to back up and walk out the door but he was suddenly grabbing her by the waist and pulling her to him.  
  
"Clay -" She tried to wriggle free of him but he held tight. There was no escaping how she felt about him; she never would be able to.  
  
He reached out and pushed a strand of her newly blondish hair off her forehead, gently tucking it behind her ear. "You don't get it, do you?" He said and to her surprise, tears glistened in his eyes. "You're not Sara and that scares me because I loved Sara and I lost her. But you're not even my wife and - and the thought of losing you too ... It cripples me. Just the thought alone. I thought for the longest time Sara was 'the one', you know, but then I met you and realized ... you are. You're the one for me. I know that because what I feel for her - felt for her - doesn't compare in any way to how much I feel about you. How much I love you..."  
  
Tears pooled in her own eyes. "Clay, you love me. You said you love me."  
  
"Yeah, you know that right?"  
  
"I thought maybe you had stopped. When you woke up from your coma after being shot, you just were different. Distant and always pushing me away. You didn't say you loved me either until now. You didn't even act like you liked me. But you say you love me so why are you pushing me away?"  
  
He sighed as a tear trickled down his face. She reached out and caught it with her thumb. "Cause, Quinn, I could lose you and that thought ... I keep trying to tell myself that it if I push you away, when something happens to you, I won't care so much. It wouldn't hurt so much. But you're not Sara. I could move on from her death but yours ... I would never get over it. And that monster who shot you, Quinn, she came into our lives because of me. Because of who I was in the past."  
  
Quinn nodded. "She's in jail now, Clay. She's going away for a long time. The only thing that can hurt us now is if you walk away from me."  
  
"You could still get in the car one morning and a drunk driver or -"  
  
Quinn cupped his cheek in her hand. "It's no use thinking about all the bad things that could happen. It doesn't help, Clay. I know because I was living in a self-protective cocoon too, looking at the world like it was out to get me ... Until I met you. You made me come out of it. I wanted to actually and now I'm happier with you than I ever thought was possible. We will live for today and each other. That said, I have every reason to believe we're going to be together for a very long time and we're going to have an amazing life. We'll hurt sometimes but we'll have each other."  
  
Clay reached out and titled her chin up to his, pressing his lips to hers desperately. When they pulled apart for the sake of breathing, he murmured, "I don't want to lose you, Quinn."  
  
"You're not going to, Clay. I'm here and I'm not leaving you. Not for anything. I was ready to walk out tonight but now I know that I could never have done that because you have my heart and my soul and we belong together. Always."  
  
"We do belong together," he admitted, stroking her face softly.  
  
"Yeah we do and we'll be together, okay? Let go of your fear because I'm not leaving you. Not without a really big fight."  
  
Clay nodded and kissed her again. It would take a long time for him to be able to trust in their future, their fate, their connection ... But there was still lots of time to learn to trust in the amazing love they had and neither of them was going to leave.  
  
FINIS


End file.
